Brown Associate Professor of Engineering Miguel Bessa has been selected to the planning committee of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s upcoming workshop, “Frontiers of Metastable Materials Development Using Artificial Intelligence.” The ad hoc planning committee will organize and conduct a public workshop that presents a high-level synopsis for scientists and policymakers into the recent use of machine learning and other AI tools for research into metastable materials, e.g., kinetically-trapped materials that retain remarkable and useful properties such as superconductivity or unprecedented hardness when outside of the extreme conditions of their thermodynamic ground state. The eight-member committee will develop the agenda for the workshop, select and invite speakers and participants, and also moderate the discussions. This will be the annual fall workshop of the National Academies' Condensed Matter and Materials Research Committee (CMMRC).
Bessa was selected for his expertise in research at the intersection of computational mechanics, machine learning, and optimization to usher in a new era of material and structural design using artificial intelligence. Instead of traditional trial-and-error, Bessa's group develops new computational methods that accelerate engineering discovery, with two recent examples being the creation of a supercompressible metamaterial using scalable Bayesian machine learning and the inverse design of a lightsail for interstellar space travel via neural topology optimization.
“Exploring materials at the edge of stability is notoriously difficult. By identifying how AI offers a new way forward, we pave the way for transformative material discoveries,” said Bessa when asked what takeaways the workshop might offer.
A former Fulbright Scholar and Veni award recipient, Bessa quickly advanced from a Caltech postdoctoral position (2017) to an Assistant and then Associate Professor role at Delft University of Technology (2021) before joining Brown in 2022. He earned his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Northwestern University.